disclaimer: I work for chef and have been using it for quite some time now so I'm most familiar with it.

I'd disagree heavily with the statement that there isn't relevance to a network admin/engineer using any of those languages. Where networking is going as a whole is going to be even more dependant on experience in python/cm languages, e.g. the cisco nexus line ship with an embedded python interpreter and also have the ability to run plugins like chef/puppet because it's much more efficient to use a programming language to manipulate your network than trying to do it by hand.

tl;dr: python,puppet,chef are not only for web developers/devops magicians and are becoming more and more important in the IT landscape.

After having made this statement "With the growing software-defined networking trend, networking pros are under pressure to learn some coding. Here are a dozen programming languages worth checking out.", it looks like most of the languages mentioned aren't of any use to a network admin or for that matter even to a networking engineer.

In general, most of the languages are in their nascent stage.

Python, Chef/Puppet are the ones predomintely used in devops, unless you are saying that network admins are also the ones doing web development.

I think that if a networking professional were to step into the realm of the software development profession, it would have to be a programming language that frequently overlaps into network/server administration tasks.

The only ones that really come to mind are Visual Basic and C#. VB can be used for scripts, office macros and software development. C# can be used for building advanced workflows in sharepoint as well as full blown software development.

In most cases, I doubt that the average Network/Server administrator would have a development studio installed on the computer such as visual studio. Therefore, it would be important that the language could be used for simple tasks without the need of a full blown development suit.

I'm not sure if learning an entire programming language would be practical for the average networking professional when it comes to automating tasks. Personally, I think that scripting languages are best suited for that sort of thing.

To that end, I'd say powershell scripting is a good way to automate tasks in a Microsoft-based environment. SQL query language might also come in handy when dealing with certain issues or trying to optimize for maximum performance.

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